Thank you for the music... Dido and David Gray.
Composite: Dave Hogan/Getty; Fred Duval/FilmMagic

Remember the early aughts? Gareth Gates had those little spikes in his hair. iPods were exciting. And, for some reason, two of the biggest artists going were both middle-of-the-road, oh-what’s-this-on-in-the-background-did-you-get-a-new-CD-then musicians David Gray and Dido. As they both release their first albums in years,we assesses which of these Y2K-era dinner-party regulars is the most impactful artist …

Edgiest collaboration

Hard to ignore the fact that Dido collaborated with Eminem, the living embodiment of punching a wall because you’re mad at your mum, with 2000’s Stan, a sample of her single Thank You that introduced her to a wider US audience. David Gray has toured with Kirsty MacColl, the Dave Matthews Band and Radiohead, but he’s never gone on record and actually made a song with any of them, so he loses this round.

Who has the most interesting name?

No disrespect to David Gray but looking at his name is a little bit like looking at a random page of the Argos catalogue and just seeing a load of shower rails. Dido Florian Cloud de Bounevialle O’Malley Armstrong, however, is arguably the most interesting name in British pop, so much so that she has to shorten it to the mononym Dido. No one else is called Dido. Literally everyone is called David Gray. A clean sweep for Dido in this round.

How much they shake their head

Dido is renowned for keeping her head extremely still when she performs, whereas Gray likes to bounce his head around like Paula Radcliffe does two miles out from a frantic marathon shit, so it’s a rare loss for the Kensington-born singer.

Early-aughts cultural impact

I think we finally have enough distance from the years 2001 to 2007 to recognise them as a separate time, with their own fashions and trends and figures of importance, the same way we realised the 80s were deranged and absurd halfway through the 90s. And to that end, both Dido and Gray are sort of the early-aughts version of Boy George and Billy Idol: two figures, intrinsically tied to the time they were notable in, two unique markers of the years they were nominated for Brits. Both singers invoke a very “considered very hard for, but ultimately not chosen for, the Love Actually soundtrack” vibe, but the most 2003 singer of the two is Dido who, for some reason, everyone listened to when Kazaa was still a thing and then abruptly stopped the moment “folktronica” became considered a dirty word.

Is their brother on Wikipedia?

One of Dido’s most notable achievements is having a brother who was more famous than her during the 90s, was briefly eclipsed by her massive fame in the aughts, and then went back to being a lot more famous than her when she stopped really releasing albums regularly. So, until David Gray gets his own Rollo-from-Faithless, Dido is always going to beat him on this.

Naming their son after that one song they did

Dido’s son is called Stanley, which seems like an overt reference to that one song she did with Eminem that spawned the megafan term, “stan”. Gray has two daughters but neither one of them is called Babylon, so he concedes this round.

Best album to make moussaka to

A score draw: it’s impossible to make moussaka without Gray’s 1998 masterwork White Ladder on in the background, but it’s also tricky to brown the mince right without 2003’s Life for Rent blaring on the speakers. It turns out the best way to get the aubergine baked in a way that’s dry without being tire-rubber chewy is to play both albums, one on top of the other, while you make a robust roux.

Making us think about bootcut jeans

The overall win here has to go to Dido. While Gray’s White Ladder did end up soundtracking those two years where every man had three different haircuts at once and every woman wore low-rise jeans and blue-tinted sunglasses for some reason, his anomalous success could have happened feasibly in any era since; he was, essentially, just Ed Sheeran without the sleeves. Dido, though, was so fundamentally of her time it’s almost a joke now – the hair fronds! The going down with this ship! The Band Aid 20 guest vocal! – and for that reason, she walks this round and the entire contest as a whole.

David Gray’s Gold in a Brass Age and Dido’s Still on My Mind are both out now

• This article was amended on 12 March 2019 because an earlier version referred to David Gray’s “2000 masterwork White Ladder”. That album was originally released in 1998 by his own label, IHT Records; in 2000 it was released by a different label, ATO Records.